Tampa Wrap: A Well-Orchestrated G.O.P. Sham

By 2:30 A.M. on Friday morning, construction crews had already removed most of the elaborate stage at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, upon which, a few hours earlier, Clint Eastwood had given one of the weirdest political speeches in memory and Mitt Romney had declared, “Now is the time to restore the promise of America.” Most of the red, white, and blue balloons had been picked up. Outside, big diggers were taking down some of the many concrete barricades that the Tampa authorities had erected in expectation of mass protests that failed to materialize.

At the bar of the nearby Sheraton, Jeff Griffin, a Republican small businessman from Georgia, who had driven down to Tampa on a whim, was enthused. Romney had given a very good speech, he said, and Marco Rubio had launched an effective appeal to Hispanic voters. Somebody a couple of seats along the bar suggested that perhaps Eastwood’s performance had overshadowed the other things, and Griffin demurred. Clint “said some powerful stuff,” he insisted. And he cited two lines in particular: “We own this country” and “When somebody doesn’t do the job we gotta let him go.”

Maybe Griffin was right. In the scheme of things, Clint’s comedic turn wasn’t such a big deal—“Aging Hollywood Gunslinger Gets Ornery.” Given his reputation as a straight shooter, in both senses of the term, he might even have helped persuade some undecided voters that it is, indeed, time to give Obama the hook. Taken as a whole, the evening largely accomplished what the Romney campaign wanted it to accomplish—presenting a much more positive picture of the candidate than the Obama campaign and the media has been doing. And much the same can be said of the convention as a whole, which was slickly produced and tightly scripted—apart from Clint.

At the start of the week, I remarked that if the Republicans could avoid any more gaffes, if Hurricane Isaac didn’t do too much damage, and if Romney could give a decent speech that included a few memorable lines and showed a bit of humanity, defying his image as a man made of cardboard, the G.O.P. candidate would probably emerge from Tampa with a bounce. The three days went off pretty much exactly as planned. The storm wasn’t as bad as feared, allowing the Convention to dominate the headlines. All three headline speakers—Ann Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Mittster—gave strong performances that appealed to their target audiences: women (Ann), G.O.P. activists (Ryan), and business-minded independents (Mitt).

Of course, the whole thing was largely a sham. But it was a well-organized sham. Even after attending several G.O.P. conventions since 1998, I find it breathtaking, and a bit unnerving, to watch the party of Ryan, Todd Akin, and Grover Norquist present itself as a moderate force devoted to the causes of deficit reduction, middle-class prosperity, and equal opportunity for all Americans, regardless, of sex, race, or creed. If a foreigner had tuned in between 10 P.M. and 11 P.M., which was all the major networks showed, he or she could be forgiven for supposing that the G.O.P. was the party of Latino Americans, African Americans, and female Americans. Nikki Haley, Condi Rice, Susana Martinez, Artur Davis, Craig Romney speaking Spanish: it looked like one big happy rainbow coalition—until the camera panned to the floor, where the delegates were overwhelmingly white middle-aged Christians.

Even Ryan’s scorching assault on Obama, which the serious media has rightly been excoriating for its factual distortions and omissions, was couched in the language of a disappointed small-town American, an upbeat Reaganite aghast at what he sees around him. The more familiar and less appealing faces of today’s G.O.P.—hard-right billionaire donors, social activists, religious zealots, libertarians, economic crackpots—were virtually absent, as was the last Republican to hold the Presidency: George W. Bush. As far as I saw, the only speakers who mentioned W. by name were Condoleezza Rice and his brother Jeb. (Kudos to them for defying the Orwellian attempt to write him and his Administration out of history.)

Romney’s speech was heavily focussed on family, country, and small business. Some conservatives were disappointed that he didn’t push enough right-wing themes, such as aggressively cutting taxes, slashing government departments, and prosecuting the culture war. But this was perfectly deliberate. Despite the calculated gamble they took in picking Paul Ryan, Romney and his advisers know that elections are won and loss in the center. The one big risk they have taken is hitching themselves to Ryan-style reform of Medicare and Social Security, but this commitment, too, was largely absent from Romney’s speech.

We won’t know until early next week how all this affected the polls. Speaking on Fox News before Thursday night’s speeches, Karl Rove said that he expected the Romney-Ryan ticket to have a two or three point lead by Tuesday or Wednesday. That seems quite plausible. Since Romney unveiled Ryan as his running mate, three weeks ago, the race has been tightening up considerably. On the day of the pick he was trailing Obama by almost five points in the Real Clear Politics poll-of-polls, which averages out the individual surveys. By Friday, Obama’s lead had been reduced to less than a point: 46.4 per cent versus 45.9 per cent.

To be sure, much of this narrowing took place before the convention started, so it can’t be attributed to anything specific that happened in Tampa. Some of it reflects the excitement generated by the Ryan pick, which has enabled the G.O.P. candidates to dominate the headlines for a couple of weeks. Some of it reflects an inevitable tightening as Labor Day approaches and the race gets serious. Both campaigns expected it to happen, and it has. In a story by Ken Walsh that appeared in Friday’s Tampa Tribune, a Romney operative is quoted as saying, “The race is dead even and has every potential to remain dead even until October,” at which point Romney would move ahead after giving an impressive performance in the debates.

That’s an optimistic prognosis for the G.O.P., but not outrageously so. In a country where the unemployment rate is 8.3 per cent and living standards have dropped sharply since the recession began, in late 2007, the underlying logic of a Romney candidacy has always been fairly compelling: with things going wrong, here is a practical businessman, well-tested in the public sector as well as the private sector, who can use his expertise to turn things around. However, largely due to Romney’s own shortcomings as a politician and some ruthlessly effective attacks upon him by Team Obama, this version of the G.O.P. campaign never really got going, at least until now.

Over the past three days in Tampa, and during the preceding couple of weeks since the Ryan announcement, the Republicans have effectively carried out a product relaunch, seeking to frame their candidate in a more favorable environment. The initial consumer-response surveys are promising, but it’s too early for celebrating. Next week, in Charlotte, the rival firm will be launching a big new advertising campaign for its market-leading product, and it, too, knows how to put on a show.